


The Illustrated Woman

by viveriveniversumvivusvici55



Category: The Outer Worlds (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Hopeful Ending, Pre-Relationship, Tattoos, gratuitous description of tattoos, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:53:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21826246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viveriveniversumvivusvici55/pseuds/viveriveniversumvivusvici55
Summary: “I am a canvas of my experiences, my story is etched in lines and shading, and you can read it on my arms, my legs, my shoulders, and my stomach.” - Kat Von DThe Captain has more ink on her than a library. Felix finds that wildly attractive.
Relationships: Female Captain/Felix Millstone, The Captain/Felix Millstone
Comments: 1
Kudos: 70





	The Illustrated Woman

**Author's Note:**

> I know jack shit about tattoos. Please bear with me. Also the dragon she refers to with her tattoo is the dragon of Wawel, or Krakow. 
> 
> (This may get another chapter if I am motivated. Stay tuned.)

Skin illustrations ain’t exactly a common thing in Halcyon. Resources are meant to be diverted to commercial causes, and the tattoo industry isn’t the perfect one for that. Why, you can get lots of tattoos, but you only have as much room as your body! There’s only so many purchases that people can make. And besides, there are better things to spend bits on, like budget-friendly Spacer’s Choice products, the multitude of products from Auntie Cleo, or a nice drink from Rizzo’s. Who wants one of them skin illustrations if you can have those?

In Felix’s life on Groundbreaker, he only knew one person who had tattoos. One of Clyde’s buddies, Winston, stole a pen from the Board Embassy, cracked it open, and used the ink to fill in a design he’d cut into his skin in the shape of a star. It had gotten infected something awful, but after it healed, Felix privately thought it was one of the coolest things he’d ever seen. It was such a visible stick-it-to-the Board thing. He wondered what it felt like to touch, whether you could feel the tattoo even after, what it looked like if it healed right, what it was like to have them in other places. 

So when the Captain takes off her jacket and gloves, and he sees a flash of colour across her skin, Felix stops dead in his tracks. Alexis drags the jacket down her arms, leaving a plain undershirt above her worker pants, and his jaw drops as he takes in the view of her arms and shoulders.

She is _covered_ in skin illustrations. They are in more colours than he thought were in ink, spiraling from the tops of her hands up her arms to her shoulders, across the front and back of them. He can see words, stars, flowers – she looks like a work of art.

His mouth waters, and when she turns back around, he has to school himself. Parvati unintentionally covers for him with her own curiosity. “Wow, Captain!” Parvati says. “That’s all mighty pretty.”

Alexis blinks, as if she had forgotten that she had them on her skin, and turns her arms over to look at them. “Yeah, I get the feeling that there ain’t much in the way of tattooing out here. Spent more bits on them than I have on anything else in my damn life.”

Felix still can’t speak. Parvati covers for him again. “Nah, they don’t do things like that out here. We don’t make enough to spend on things like that. May I look up close and proper?”

“Of course! Didn’t get them to keep them hidden,” she grins, and looks at Felix. “You can too, Felix. They don't bite.”

He stumbles over his words. “Thank you, boss. Don’t know the right way to do things like that.”

They step closer to take a look, and now that they are up close, Felix can feel the stupid expression slide across his face in awe. There is so much detail and colour. Most of the work is on her arms: swirling lines in patterns he doesn’t recognize, twining vines and blooming flowers from a world he’s never set foot on, crashing waves, angry creatures that look a bit like raptidons, and feathers of a thousand colours. The crowning piece, though, is on her shoulderblades - a fiery winged creature with its wings spread by a rising sun. It’s a tapestry, a vision. It’s _beautiful. **She’s**_ _beautiful._

There are words written through the patterns, and he reads one out softly to himself. “ _If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.”_

“It’s part of a poem,” Hawthorne says gently, startling him out of his focus. “An old Earth poet.

“That sounds real sweet,” Parvati says with a smile.

“I wanted to get the whole thing but there wasn’t enough room.”

“What’s the rest?” Felix has enough moisture in his mouth to get that out.

Hawthorne tips her head, jogging her memory. A lock of dyed purple hair falls out of her bun onto her bare shoulder, and Felix’s fingers itch to tuck it back under her ear. Still, she comes up with it.

_“If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain; If I can ease one life the aching, Or cool one pain, Or help one fainting robin Unto his nest again, I shall not live in vain.”_

It’s short and sweet and it sounds like the captain in a nutshell. Felix’s heart aches something fierce for her. “Wow,” he settles on. “I got…so many questions.”

She turns and opens her mouth to speak when there is a thud outside, followed by the sound of an explosion. ADA helpfully chimes in, “Captain, we appear to have raptidons knocking at the door.”

Alexis sighs and hauls her jacket and gloves back on. “When we got a moment, you can ask me later. Let’s go teach the rapts some manners.” She leans back. “MAX! YOU TOO!”

Felix grabs a tossball stick and grins to hide the internal cursing, while Alexis grabs her pistols and Parvati her wrench. Time for questions later. Got to go kick some assholes in the chest first.

* * *

The raptidons outside turn into a hunt for survivors turns into missions for Auntie Cleo. Afterwards, they practically stagger into the Unreliable, throwing their clothes at SAM to wash (not burn, don’t you dare burn them, SAM). Parvati makes her way to bed, and the Vicar goes off to read. That leaves Felix and Alexis in the kitchen, with a bottle of stolen Spectrum vodka. Alexis cracks it open and puts her legs up on the table.

“You want some?” She asks. “It’s Red.”

He stares. That was certainly not something he was ever able to have. “Why not? No one going to yell at me for drinking over my station.”

“That’s the spirit!” Alexis smiles and pours them each shots. She taps hers against his. “Na zdar'ovye.”

“Bless you.”

Alexis snorts on her vodka and coughs with laughter, just barely managing not to inhale the vodka. He isn’t quite sure why, but it does make him smile. “What? What does that mean?”

“It means ‘to your health’,” Alexis snickers. “My baba taught it to me. Only Russian I know. Thought it does kinda sound like a sneeze, don't it?”

Felix blinks. “Ah. Well, to your health too.”

They take a proper swig of vodka then, and oh, it burns. Felix’s eyes water, although Alexis doesn’t break a sweat.

“So…” she smiles. “We have a moment. You got questions?”

He frowns. “About what?”

She taps her bare shoulders, finger landing right on a snarling expression of some kind of creature. He blinks. “Right. That. So what is that thing?”

She looks. “Oh, it’s a dragon. Old folklore. Are these things really not shared out here?”

“Mostly just religious stories. Trying to control us and what we learn,” Felix gripes. “Dragons sound cool. Are they like raptidons?”

She nods. “Larger, even. Bigger than houses. Breathed fire. Fictional, but still really cool. This one was from a story my baba told me.”

He nods. “So did it all hurt to get done?”

She laughs. “Some spots more than others. Like here,” she taps the fleshy part of her arm, “not so bad, but here,” she taps the inside of her wrist, where a neat little green plant curls on itself, “hurt like a son of a bitch. If it’s boney or closer to tendons, then it’s painful. Never mind if it’s somewhere super sensitive.”

Felix thinks for just a moment about what that could mean and his cheeks go pink. She chuckles, reading his face with ease. “I didn’t get any places like _that_ tattooed, don’t worry. There are some under the clothes, but that’s about it.”

He jumps to the next question, trying to avoid any more talk about what it's like under her clothes. “How long did it take?”

“Individually or to get to this point?”

“Both.”

“The longest one was my backpiece, absolutely.” She gestures to the fiery creature on her back. “That was a 10 hour session for the lines, and another one for the colouring. That was a couple of days. The tattoo gun got quite a workout on me.”

He can’t imagine sitting for that long with someone jabbing a needle into him.

“In total? About…ten years?” She says carefully. “It cost a lot of money, so I had to earn it all up in order to get it done. All through the same guy. I hope he did well.”

“Ten years?” His eyes widen.

“Yup. Got my first when I was eighteen. Friend’s older brother had a shop, and the friend got me a tattoo for my birthday. Ended up being this one,” she shifts over so Felix can see and lifts up the bottom of her shirt. There’s more illustrations on her hips, but he can see the oldest one, on account of the fading. It’s a small paw print, about the size of his thumb. “I had a dog when I was little. That was his. Used a photo for reference.”

It is so endearing that Felix feels his throat clench. “That’s awful sweet, boss.”

“I tried. Every tattoo means something to me. Apart from one or two that I just thought were pretty.”

“What about that big fire thing?”

“It’s a phoenix. Meant to symbolize rebirth,” she explains. “They were in stories – like the size of pterorays. They’d live for ages, and when they died, they burst into flame and burned themselves into ashes. Then a chick would be born from the ashes. Reborn, able to have a new life.”

Felix’s expression goes soft. “Real good.”

“You want one, Felix?” She asks. “If I can find the supplies, I’m sure I can arrange it.”

He blinks. Having something like that would be...real sweet. “I’d like that. Yeah.”

* * *

It takes a lot of wrangling, but Alexis finds a tattoo gun and ink. And everyone wants one. Even Max, which is surprising (although he hears that people make their own tattoos in Tartarus, if they got the supplies, and the Vicar _was_ in prison). They draw out what they want on bits of paper, and Alexis does a couple little practice runs on a Buncha Nannas to make sure she’s got it.

Nyoka goes first, and everyone stands there quietly while Alexis works. There is no deviation from her focus - Alexis's eyes are sharp and her hands are steady as the gun works over the skin. After an hour or so, the word CHARON is written firmly across Nyoka’s back, with little embellishments by each word. Ellie asks for a bullseye on her wrist, which doesn’t take long. Parvati gets a little heart on her wrist – only a couple minutes, but Parvati looks beyond excited. Max, who has since seen the miracle of drugs, doesn’t ask for an OSI symbol. Instead, he gets a small nebula right over his heart.

Felix may feel his eyebrow twitch at how long Alexis spends bent over the Vicar’s bare chest.

Finally, it’s Felix’s turn. He’s thought long and hard trying to think of what he wants as a tattoo. He kinda wants to get the Rizzo’s Rangers logo somewhere on him, as a proper declaration of his faith for his team, but there is something that came to him last night. He gingerly offers Alexis his slip of paper, and she looks at it with a smile. 

"Somehow, I'm not surprised," she says. "Where do you want it?"

"I was thinking right on the middle of my chest, cuz that would be sweet, but..." he ultimately puts his hand over his left ribs. "Feels right. How bad will it hurt?"

"A bit, going over the bone, but it shouldn't take too long."

Felix takes off his jacket and rucks his shirt up to his armpits, settling back on the chair. She carefully cleans off the spot with disinfectant, making sure that it's clean, and turns the drawing into a stencil, pressing it onto his skin. "What do you think?" She asks, showing him it on his side with a mirror.

He turns his head to peer into the small mirror and nods affirmatively. "Looks great!"

Alexis puts down the mirror and leans over him, gun at the ready. 

"You ready? If it's too much, lemme know and we can stop."

"I'm ready, boss."

The moment the gun touches Felix's skin, he feels his face flinch. It doesn't quite hurt, but it feels strange. Like he's being stung over and over again. Or like someone is repeatedly jabbing a needle into him, which, hey, that's what Alexis is doing. Now comes the fun part of staying completely still as she works. He stays still on the chair, trying not to flinch whenever her fingers brush a tickling spot on his ribs and making sure he doesn't look at her because seeing all that focus directed at him is unlike anything he's ever felt. He knew he liked having her eyes on him, but stars, this is just intense. 

"How you doing?" She asks softly. "I'm almost done the lines. Do you need a break before I fill them in?"

"I might," he says. "Just to get the energy out."

She finishes the lines a few moments later and pulls back the gun. "Go for it."

Felix takes a few moments to pace the room, stretching his arms, and then goes for a quick jog up and down the stairs. It is absolute agony staying still like that. He can barely take it, but now he's gotta go back and finish. Finally, he strides up the stairs and sits back down. "Ready."

It doesn't take long to finish the tattoo, although he does wince when the gun goes back and forth over each bone of his ribs. Her thumb occasionally brushes over his skin in an apology, and he memorizes the touch as best as he can. He might never get this close to her again. But about half an hour later, and it's done. "There we go. You can take a look before I wrap it up."

He takes the mirror and spins to look at it. As much as he had been tempted to write 'Fuck the Board' in capital letters across his skin, that wasn't the best thought. No, for this, he chose the Groundbreaker logo with a couple small stars around it. His breath catches at the sight of it and he swallows.

"It looks...great," he says softly, voice catching.

"I'm glad," Alexis smiles. She rubs lotion on it and puts some bandages over it to make sure it heals. "Another part of your story, Felix."

He looks at her from where she is still sitting, and their eyes meet. "Thanks, boss," he says sincerely.

Alexis's cheeks go pink. "My pleasure."


End file.
